New look Big East: doom or destiny?

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San Diego State to the Big East sounds like a bit of an oxymoron, doesn’t it?

Well, the Aztecs, who happen to be 3,000 miles from Connecticut, will in fact be one of the newest conference members beginning in 2013. San Diego State and Boise State were introduced as the newest football-only members of the Big East on Wednesday. SMU, Houston and Central Florida will enter as full members, as well.

That’s right, folks, there are 12 teams that compete in the Big Ten, 10 teams in the Big 12, and the Big East now has a team that plays in San Diego.

The world of college sports has certainly become a strange place, but I digress.

So what were the motives for this move?

First, and probably foremost, was the Big East’s desire to add new members to its conference, following the secession of three of the conference’s marquee schools, in Syracuse, Pittsburgh and West Virginia earlier this year. Big East officials have stated that the three teams will not be able to leave until 2014, but West Virginia recently filed a suit requesting that it be allowed to leave for the Big 12 immediately.

As if that were not enough to dismantle the conference, the Big East thought it had landed a big-name football program in TCU, but much to the conference’s chagrin, TCU bolted for the Big 12 almost as soon as it received an offer.

While the Big East was still reeling from the departures, conference commissioner John Marinatto made a desperation move, sending invitations to the five schools in order to salvage what was left of his battered conference.

All five of the teams will leave their smaller FBS conferences and become part of a major BCS division. Clearly, a major influence on the schools’ decisions to join the Big East can be attributed to the conference’s status as an automatic-qualifier conference for BCS bowl games.

No longer can it be disputed whether an undefeated Boise State or Houston should be able to play in a major bowl, or even the national championship.

It’s easy to understand Boise’s frustration with the system. All you need to do is take a look at the list of BCS bowl games this year in order to infer why the Broncos bolted to a major conference. The team received an invite to the “prestigious” MAACO bowl against lowly Arizona State (6-6, 4-5 Pac 12), even after going 11-1 and finishing the season as the seventh-ranked team in the nation. Five of the ten teams playing in BCS bowls are ranked lower than Boise State. Not only do teams that play in non-AQ conferences like Boise State need to win all of their games, they also need so-called “style points” in order to properly impress BCS voters.

It’s not all just about playing the game to be the best in the country, though. All businesses are influenced by money, and make no mistake, college football is a big-time business.

Boise State’s current television contract with the Mountain West nets the team approximately $1.5 million annually, but its new contract with the Big East will boost that revenue to $6.5 million a year. No need for a degree in economics to understand that’s an extra $5 million a year for the Broncos.

The Big East also had to make a move in order to keep its conference together, as well as to continue to gain the revenue of a major BCS conference. The conference will be able to renew its television contract next September, and wanted to have quality football teams, as well as big-market teams, in order to entice more viewers. Southern Methodist University is located in Dallas, which has the fifth-largest television market in the country. Additionally, the University of Houston is stationed in the tenth-largest TV market.

Financial gains aside, there are still plenty of question marks for the Big East moving forward. Will it still be an automatic-qualifier come 2013? Will the scheduling and cross-country travel for conference games prove too much of a problem?

Commissioner Marinatto has expressed his confidence in the additions.

Upon news breaking of the expansion last Wednesday, Marinatto said the newly-structured conference will have the “single largest media footprint in intercollegiate athletics from coast-to-coast in football,” and that the Big East “will be the first truly national football conference.”

Ironically enough, after it was announced that San Diego State’s football team would be a member of the Big East, the school announced that it had plans for the rest of the its sports teams to become members of the Big West.

It seems a few colleges in this country could use a geography lesson.

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